Salyer bid to suppress evidence fails &mdash; again

As the first of his two federal criminal trials approaches, agribusiness executive Scott Salyer failed on two fronts to get potential evidence suppressed.

In a Feb. 9 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton rejected a defense challenge to search warrants used by FBI agents to comb through Salyer's Pebble Beach home and company facilities in April 2008.

On Wednesday, another Sacramento federal judge said prosecutors could listen to most of more than 100 calls that were recorded between Salyer and a female attorney while he was in Sacramento County Jail. The defense contended the recordings were protected by attorney-client privilege.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Edmund Brennan said Salyer tried to use the attorney-client privilege to protect calls with a girlfriend who knew little about Salyer's pending criminal and bankruptcy cases, but happened to be an attorney.

Salyer, the former president of SK Foods Group in Monterey, is accused by the government of running his former processed tomato company — SK Foods LLC — as a criminal racket by bribing buyers for major food companies, selling low-grade product at inflated prices and trying to rig bids and fix prices.

The defense was granted a request to split the charges between two trials, the first of which is scheduled for mid-April. A September trial is scheduled for the remaining charges — antitrust charges of price-fixing and bid-rigging.

Salyer was arrested in February 2010 after former SK Foods employees and others pleaded guilty to charges and began cooperating with prosecutors in a five-year investigation into food-industry fraud.

Salyer, free from custody on $6.3 million bond, has denied the charges and has hired top defense attorneys to fight them.

The defense contended search warrants for Salyer's home and SK Foods facilities were issued without sufficient probable cause and were too broad. But Judge Karlton said Salyer failed to show how the warrants "do not comport with the Fourth Amendment."

Salyer's challenge of a search of his Google email account, which prosecutors said was based on evidence that Salyer was attempting to flee the country to live in Europe, was rejected.

Though Salyer claimed that 112 jail-recorded calls between himself and attorney Cynthia Longoria were attorney-client communications, Judge Brennan said his review of the calls "demonstrates the opposite for the vast majority."

The judge said the calls were those of "two persons with a long-term and ongoing personal relationship."

He said during the calls they "discuss movies, books, magazines and news articles, mutual friends, family members, health, food, airplane flights, past vacations, their relationship, Salyer's relationship with others, life in general and, of course, Salyer's current problems."

Saying "salacious details" of the conversations need not be repeated, the judge said the personal nature of nearly all of the calls made it clear Longoria was acting as a supportive friend and not as Salyer's attorney.

The recorded calls show that she was not familiar with his criminal and bankruptcy cases and during one call expressed surprise at Salyer's suggestion that he hire her, the judge said.

"To do what?" she said, in a surprised tone, the judge said.

Salyer explained — if she were on his legal team, "Guess who gets to hang out with me?"

After his arrest, Salyer spent nearly eight months in jail before arranging bail in September 2010.